


the landscape of cruelty which is a garden (a love that transcends hunger)

by possibilist



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: 2k15, F/F, christmas special time, keep carmilla a monster 2k14, or yknow, suicide mention? kinda? idk carmilla is always weird with these things but anyway potential triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:04:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2850224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'“I am a monster, you know,” you say.</p><p>She doesn’t argue, which makes you raise an eyebrow and turn toward her.</p><p>“I—I’ve been reading about monsters,” she says. “They were—Carmilla—” her voice is urgent and she steps toward you—“they were like angels.” She makes air quotes and then says, slightly unsteady, staring up at the stars like she’s struggling to remember: “‘They functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary, saying, in effect, “Pay attention; something of profound importance is going to happen.”’”'</p><p>first of all: trashbaby carmilla. second of all: involves christmas special headcanon. third of all (& most importantly): carmilla is a monster, & that's wonderful. hollstein angst but so much fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the landscape of cruelty which is a garden (a love that transcends hunger)

**Author's Note:**

> this is mainly due to the fact that the christmas special actually did a brilliant job of pointing out that carmilla's monstrous nature is quite, quite lovable, & i'm tired of people trying to say that laura 'humanizes' carmilla. no. she lets carmilla love her—gently—just as she is.

**the landscape of cruelty which is a garden (a love that transcends hunger)**

.

_a lover saying_ Hold me tight, it’s getting cold.  _we have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders & a gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.  
_—richard siken, ‘snow & dirty rain’

//

You’re very used to pretending to be human that it almost doesn’t seem like a lie anymore: your monstrous identity can, in some ways, you guess, be tempered with stolen grape sodas and cookies.

And memory, even for you, is a fickle thing: you’ve kept your journals from all throughout history, because no one is going to record your lifetimes elsewhere, because you do not belong in texts anyone will know, that children will learn. Your books are published under different names; your ideas are given to other people who are only alive for a breath here or there.

It’s only fair, maybe, you try to convince yourself on the good days, that they leave something of themselves behind.

You are always already  _left behind_  anyway.

The words in your journals from before the coffin seem far away: you’d had to write with your right hand; your print curves unfamiliar; your diction is foreign, neater, gentler; most of them are in old-fashioned, lovely German.

But you’re left handed, and you like to curse, and you don’t actually mind English: you were a different girl than you are now before that prison, and most days, you don’t know which state of monstrosity is more honest.

/

The stars are the only thing that you’re really sure existed when you were human, which is a part of why you look at them so often. 

You don’t believe in such a thing as  _humanity_ , or whatever good thing people try to define that as: you’ve seen more cruelty and death and violence from humans than you ever want to recall.

And yet, always, you do. You’re an abused  _child_ , you sometimes remember, very strikingly, although you don’t know at all what to do with that; you were freed from horrendous physical punishment for love by the deaths of sixty million people.

If that’s part of the definition of humanity—which it is—there is nothing so glimmering, so gentle, that it’s any better than you are: you really do try to save people, even if those stars never recognize you again.

/

You, of course, can’t tell Laura any of this, can’t tell her that a very long time ago you wondered about them in the same way you still can’t shake now, can’t tell her that when you were in that coffin you would swim your hands through choking blood and wish you could breathe and make fists to press into your eyes. 

It was the only thing that kept you close to any semblance of sane: you couldn’t punch yourself out of that makeshift, infinite, infinitesimal hell, but you could punch yourself into seeing stars.

/

It’s strange to admit to being a vampire because Laura doesn’t seem to care all that much about your nature compared to the missing girls. It’s comforting and refreshing—and idiotic—because you could’ve murdered her in a flash hundreds of times by now.

You don’t talk because you’re pissed off and annoyed but also because if you do, you’re not sure you could be anything but sincere: no one has so easily accepted  _what_ you are before.

/

Day eight hits and things are starting to get fuzzy. You’ve starved yourself before: after that rancid coffin blood was so revolting that you waited two weeks—despite how hungry you were; and  _god,_ you were hungry—before you had four seizures within an hour, sitting in the middle of your cold woods. 

You know starving won’t absolve you of anything, but it does seem to bring you back to yourself a little bit, and you’d snuck into a hospital in Vienna in the middle of the night and took a bag of AB negative and one of A positive.

You knew, before all of this, that you’re allergic to AB negative.

You’d had more seizures, but not because you were hungry.

/

The morning of day nine you remember April 20, 1952, because Maman had found you in Paris, while you were in a cafe on the Left Bank, reading Dostoyevsky again in the original Russian instead of catching up on new things like you should be.

Your hair brushed just above your shoulders and you’re wearing pants—an exciting development in 70 years, really—and a loose silk blouse. It was a breathtaking spring day, sunny and warm and breezy, and you were up by noon because, even though light exhausts you, it reminded you that you weren’t in a coffin anymore; you liked this particular cafe because they played a lot of jazz and it always smelled like cigarettes. 

You were a notorious chain smoker, because you knew it won’t do anything to your lungs and you liked the way it makes your voice rasp, the way your red lipstick looks on the thin filters that seem so organic for your small, lithe fingers to hold. 

And it’s not like you’d really thought that Maman wouldn’t find you; you couldn’t hide for all of eternity, after all—but those few years, with your cigarettes and loose, light curls, strings of girls that in another lifetime you could’ve loved and grown old with and not worried about sacrificing them to any evil thing, so many artists who took you in and loved you—they were good years, little glimmers of healing.

You’d heard Maman’s voice before you’d seen her; she orders an espresso in a perfect Parisian accent—you’d picked up a accent from the south just because you liked the lilt of it, because it was easier to have that than your German seeping through like blood.

Your stomach had plummeted and you’d debated trying to run, because you  _could not_ go back in that coffin, and you’d thought that you could probably break your chair and drive one of its sharp, splintered legs through your chest before Maman could stop you, which had seemed like your very best option, but then Maman was standing next to you, her hand gentle but firm on your shoulder.

“Mircalla,” she’d said reverently, then sat down across from you.

Breathing had always helped you, even after you were turned, helped you make it through thunderstorms and small, dark coatrooms after the coffin, so you’d focused on that now: the in-and-out of your lungs, the cigarette smoke that came out of your nose, the burn and sweet sting.

“Maman,” you’d said, willed your voice to stop shaking. But still, your words had taken on a husk to them that she’d raised an eyebrow at, and a slow smile had spread across her face when she’d fully taken you in.

“This time period suits you,” she’d said, and you’d glared at her even though you’d felt like you were about to cry, because your world was about to crash down. She’d continued when you’d stayed silent: “You have two options, sweetheart: Either you come back to Styria and study philosophy like you’ve always wanted. But you must fetch girls for me—you have a new brother and he’s, shall we say, less than competent, and I assume this—” she’d gestured to the general area of the cafe—“advancement in thought should serve you well in that regard.”

You’d only swallowed, because you’re still used to hiding what you are—concepts of  _sexuality_ are new to you, and foreign and somewhat scary, even, because things haven’t progressed  _that_ much, even though now there’s a word for your orientation.

Your stomach had rolled when she’d go on, “Your second option is re-internment.”

You’d shut your eyes tight, so tight dots of light pricked at the edges of your vision.

“Do I have to sleep with them?” you’d asked.

Maman had grinned. “You are an absolutely revolting creature, my sweet girl.”

/

Noon of day nine: Laura turns her camera on and you want to cry, because she’s the  _one_  girl in almost 150  _years_ that you’d actually  _wanted_  to sleep with—to kiss and whisper sweet nothings into her skin and come silently with holy silence on your lips—and she’d thought you’d only wanted to hurt her.

You act embarrassed because that’s easier.

/

But then: she doesn’t seem revolted at all when your vision starts to focus again; blood is sharp against your tongue but her hand is soft in your hair and she asks if you want more—you do, she’d  _starved_ you, the moron—and when you nod she only puts the mug to your lips.

A few minutes later, if your heart had still been able to beat, she’d have known that you were terrified to tell your story.

You’ve never said any of the words aloud before.

She treats it lightly until she can’t any longer, and then her hand is soft of your knee, and she doesn’t ever flinch away.

/

“Have you read  _Frankenstein_?” she asks after Will untied you.

You stare at the bandaids on her neck that are visible because her hair is up in a very messy, and admittedly very cute, bun before you lower your book on non-binary gender and lived experience and say, “Is that a serious question, buttercup?”

She sighs, then turns around in her chair to face you. “I’m  _trying_ to work out something in my lit paper and I just can’t quite seem to get it, and—it’s like, the disparate parts, and, like, what is it like to be a monster and want to be loved?”

You stare at her and you feel almost panicked because is she asking you this question as a scholar or—

“Oh god,” she says, “that was  _rhetorical_ , I swear, Carmilla, I—”

“‘My feelings were those of rage and revenge. I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me,’” you say blandly before shutting your book and sitting up, and her eyes are wide.

“Page 130 in your edition, sweetheart,” you say, then swipe a bottle of whiskey from under your bed and walk out of your room.

“Carmilla, wait,” she calls after you.

You want to; you don’t; you can’t.

/

You’ve jumped off rooftops five times: the first because you wondered if it would kill you: Istanbul, 1784; the second because you didn’t understand what you were: Vienna, 1945; the third because you didn’t feel real: Paris, 1952; the fourth because you were so  _angry_ : New York, 1971; the fifth because you couldn’t feel  _anything_ anymore: Styria, 2013.

/

Laura finds you—predictably, you’d not gone anywhere creative—on the roof of the philosophy building, walking along the ledge, arms outspread, the bottle of whiskey in your left hand.

“Carmilla,” she says, “I’m  _sorry_.”

Your head is clouded and you don’t any feel warmer than when whiskey flows through you. “I  _am_  a monster, you know,” you say.

She doesn’t argue, which makes you raise an eyebrow and turn toward her.

“I—I’ve been reading about monsters,” she says. “They were—Carmilla—” her voice is urgent and she steps toward you—“they were like  _angels_.” She makes air quotes and then says, slightly unsteady, staring up at the stars like she’s struggling to remember: “‘They functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary, saying, in effect, “Pay attention; something of profound importance is going to happen.”’”

You just  _stare_ at her, because how in the  _world_ did a human like this exist?

“You’re just  _different_ ,” she insists, “no less—” her breath hitches but she’s  _Laura_ so of course she plows on—“lovable.”

You clench your jaw. “Jumping wouldn’t kill me,” you say.

“I know.”

“I mean, I  _know_  it wouldn’t.”

She looks so sad but only says, “Yeah,” and reaches out a small, steady hand for you.

You take it.

/

When you’re walking back to your dorm, you say, “You’ve read Stryker.”

She nods a little with a shy smile. “I, um, I saw one of her texts you left out in a reader and, um, she seemed particularly relevant.” 

“I studied with her for a bit,” you say. “She’s very relevant.”

Laura takes your hand and then squeezes.

You don’t let her let go.

/

After you find out about the sword—pressure and nitrogen narcosis really  _don’t_ matter to you—one night before you’re about to go out, she says, very seriously, “I know this is a touchy subject because your existence must be full of such suffering, but I am  _so glad_ you’re a vampire right now.”

You roll your eyes and laugh—sincerely, because  _what the fuck?_ and say, “You are  _so strange_ , you know that?”

She grins. “You’re one to talk.”

/

You are  _not_ the same kind of monster as Maman, you tell yourself, over and over and over again.

/

There’s a difference between being understood for your nature and being condemned for it, although when you come back to that room and Perry holds a stake in front of her, you’re not so sure they’re different.

You don’t know why you ever thought otherwise.

/

You  _poof_ into a small apartment you still kept in Reykjavik, mostly because it was lovely and you went there sometimes at night when you knew Maman was busy with Will or other incompetent minions—and  _really_ , no wonder she needed you back—and look through your trunk of precious things.

It’s silly, you know, for you to keep them, but sometimes they’re achingly comforting: you have a few small sketches of you from Robert Maplethorpe—an eighteenth birthday present, he’d said, and written,  _to you and your beautiful love_ —it never surprises you that he’d seen some hope in you that you’d lost; you have quite a lot of priceless jewelry, which you always put at the bottom in a gold box your birth father had given you when you turned sixteen: you were, you know without much doubt, his favorite child: the oldest, with his dark hair and dark eyes; your messy handwriting and disdain for needlepoint and the pianoforte; your love for fencing. Your mother was constantly frustrated with you and your ripped dresses and callused palms, how you liked Hungarian better than German, how you’d drink too much and laugh too loudly.

You keep things to remind you that, once upon a time, you were very alive.

/

You never ask how mother chose you.  _Why_ mother chose you.

But you think, mostly, it was because of this.

/

Your studded, patched leather jacket from the early seventies always makes you smile: it smells like pot and cigarettes, and, for the first time in really all of the history you remember, you were allowed—encouraged—to be  _angry_.

And you were: at Maman, at the horror of all of the suffering of others that you’d borne witness to; at your own detrimental desire.

When Maman had seen you in 1973, your scuffed boots and torn jeans and t-shirt and partially shaved head, she’d slapped you.

You’d smiled.

/

You have keepsakes of the nights from when you were filled with wonder: the moon landing, when the Berlin Wall was torn down (both sides of the Cold War were basically morons, but it was amazing), the first time you saw The Rolling Stones.

You have a blanket that still smells like your menthol cigarettes from one night you spent alone in a small cabin outside of Reykjavik in 1975 that you’d broken into; it hadn’t been your best move, really, but it was just after the sacrifice and you’d saved four girls but five still died, despite all of your fighting.

For as much as you loved punk, it was exhausting. You didn’t have much of anything left in you, at that point, and you came to Iceland—with its strange, incongruent, icy, fiery, monstrous beauty—to die.

You’d felt more tired than you ever hand, in  _295_ years, but you’d gone outside to say goodbye to the stars, and then you’d had to take a breath— _had to_ , because it was the first time you’d seen the Northern Lights, and how could you have missed that?

You spent the night at your window, wrapped in that warm blanket, lazily smoking cigarettes and watching something absolutely ineffable, and maybe,  _maybe_ , you thought, there was  _something_  left.

You’d found a thick sweater in the morning, a knit cap, mittens and thick socks, and you'd looked in the mirror. You’d had a mohawk for four years; you’d been hard and furious for longer, dark and harsh. You  _are_  those things, but the lights were different, and you’d felt something you thought you no longer could: you loved them.

You’d taken scissors and cut your hair as evenly as you could, close to your scalp, because you’d figured that’s the easiest way to grow it out eventually. You changed out of your leather jacket and your perpetual white t-shirt, taken out your piercings, pulled on those thick socks beneath your heavy boots, shrugged into the sweater that covered your hands, tugged the cap over your head. You looked younger, softer, sadder, and you’d shoved your jacket and t-shirt and that smoky, magic blanket in your duffel and left behind a pack of cigarettes, a mess of dark hair in the bathroom, three sets of priceless gold earrings, and a wooden stake as offerings in exchange for one final gasp of existence.

You’d walked and swam—and cried—all the way back to Silas, just in time for Christmas, and Will had raised his brows with a surprised whistle when he’d seed you, but before he could say anything you’d swept right past him with a roll of your eyes, like you didn’t care at all. 

But when Maman had seen you she’d sighed with a frown, touched your cheek gently, and said, “Mircalla, just—put on a dress,  _please_ —” this is a not a request, you know— “and wash up for dinner.”

/

You remember that night whenever you think there is no good left.

And now you think of Laura. How she would love Iceland, how she would’ve loved you then, how she would’ve tried to save you then too.

And when you get back, and you watch her video, you think she very much has failed, but it’s the one time in all of your years that suicide seems giving, that you can die in the light.

/

You do.

/

But then Laura is hugging you and your ribs are broken and your mouth is coppery and tainted but Laura is meeting your gaze without hesitation and then she’s kissing you back with a little squeal and making you laugh and then she’s laying you down on her bed, hovering above you, and, distantly you remember:  _the abject is the violence of mourning for an object that has always-already been lost. Abjection is a resurrection that has gone through death; it is an alchemy that transforms death into a start of life, of a new significance._

“You’re beautiful,” you whisper into her neck, just above her pulse point and the tiny scars you put there. “You’re so beautiful.”

She cups your cheek and looks at you like she has eternity to spend doing so, and she says, “Thank you.”

/

She stops kissing you after your ribs kind of  _crunch_ under her hand, and she jolts back with a disgusted face.

“They’ll heal,” you say, a little panicked, and she just rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?” she asks.

“I wanted to kiss you more.”

She rolls her eyes and then gets up quickly and you start to protest when she comes back from the kitchen with an ice-pack.

Your heart breaks a little when she lifts up your shirt with a grimace and puts it in place, then lays down on your other side.

“We have plenty of time for kissing, baby,” she says. “Especially without broken bones.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” you ask, but you’re already starting to fall asleep—apparently, dying a second time takes a lot out of you.

She laughs into your chest and slings a careful arm across your stomach. “To be honest I haven’t slept too much either,” she whispers with a little yawn.

You kiss the top of her head.

“Also,” she mumbles, kisses above where your heart would be beating if it could, “I’m so glad you’re a vampire right now because you’re still here.”

It’s maybe the best reasoning you’ve ever heard, and you sleep into life, for once, without any nightmares.

/

Day 4: you sit down with Laura in your small tent—she’d had  _two_ small tents, courtesy of her dad, so LaF and Perry were in the other—and she lights the little lantern when you open the flap: you’re still scared of small spaces and the dark, no matter how much you desperately try not to be.

She kisses you without hesitation and you feel her smile against your lips, which makes your chest feel expansive.

You pull back and trace down her cheek and around her jaw before you say, “I want to court you.”

She  _almost_ laughs—which you  _knew_ she would, because  _of course_ it’s antiquated, but Laura is serious to you and you’re going to do all of this right, and you’re also not ready to have sex yet, and she doesn’t seem to understand  _why_ , so this will help.

But then her eyes settle on your serious face and she asks, “What does that constitute?”

You smile and say, “Lots of elaborate dates on my end, and eventually I need to ask your dad permission and—we’re supposed to be very chaste and all of that, but it’s 2014 so I’ll allow more kissing.”

She shakes her head very fondly and grins, then kisses you again, softly and respectfully, and she says, “Vampires gently courting girls? This world is amazing.”

“Not girls,” you say. “One very pretty girl. Courting is—um,  _serious_.”

She blushes, and it’s just cute and something you never dreamed you could have. “Well in that case,” she says, “you have full permission to court me, Countess Karnstein.”

You laugh, but you feel significantly better about everything, and she turns down the lantern a little bit but still leaves it on, and you curl up together in a mess of sleeping bags.

“Tomorrow we’re going to make yes/no/maybe lists and establish safewords,” she mumbles—you have no idea what those lists are, but you turn over and tug her arm across your chest; you’re alone in a tent in the middle of the woods, no one cares if you’re the little spoon.

“Okay,” you say. “We’ll do that tomorrow.”

She kisses the back of your neck and says, “Yeah,” and holds you just a little tighter.

/

You’re  _hungry_ , and everyone’s blood is just  _swirling_ around their bodies, and you’ve never not eaten for three weeks before.

You have a seizure—luckily, while Laura and Perry are out “searching for a town” and LaF is asleep—and you resign yourself and sluggishly, lightheaded, go out to find  _something_ to eat.

Which ends up being a badger, which is absolutely disgusting but it’s nutrients, at least, and you resign yourself to being hungry and slightly grossed out for the ostensible future.

But then you see smoke, and Laura is bouncing happily beside you, tugging on your hand and dragging you through the snow.

You let her pull you until she absolutely  _face plants_ into a huge drift, and you can’t help but laugh for a little while before you help her out.

She’s freezing and pouting and you tickle her side and then she kisses you with a frown.

“You’re such an asshole,” she says.

“I’ve heard worse,” you say, and she laughs with a sad little smile.

/

The mayor of this town is annoying as  _fuck_ and doesn’t seem to understand that monsters are just as diverse as humans: there are people who want to do good, and there are people who want to stop that safety from happening, and really, there is nothing particularly different between compassions, whatever cells a body is made of.

So, naturally, you, like,  _really_ want to eat him.

/

Laura doesn’t let you but she does make you wear a  _ridiculous_ holiday sweater, but it has a very disgruntled cat on it, so—whatever, it’s big and warm and she looks at you like you’re powerful enough to have hung the moon.

Not quite, but you’ll take it anyway.

/

“Murder her for Christmas, murder her for Christmas!” Laura is scared on the floor and you wait until she actually  _asks_ for help—in quite possibly the most amusing way, and  _god,_ you’re so in love—before you promptly,  _finally_ , get to eat.

There’s a part of you, distantly, that thinks of the nature of monsters whenever you feed: you think maybe Maman had it wrong: to revolt is to begin a revolution, and maybe your constant becoming as eighteen is something better than just murder, something as lovely as gentle hands.

Laura cleans off the last traces of blood from your mouth like it’s frosting, or pizza sauce, and—you’d made this a rule, mainly because it made you more comfortable—kisses you on your cheek instead of on your lips. 

“Merry Christmas, Carm,” she says, and you are really, really far from the creature you used to be.

/

Later that night, when you finally have a bed—there’s a bedroom connected to the diner, and LaF and Perry had graciously let you take it—Laura traces your mouth and then coaxes it up, touches your incisors with the pad of her thumb. They’re not actually your fangs, but you understand the gesture nonetheless, and she says, “I was reading a book you left out,” which makes you smile, because—of course she was.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, “and I don’t know if I really understood all of it, but, there’s one part I remember, and—it’s like, ‘a minotaur who swallows other people’s labyrinths.’”

You nod and press your forehead to hers. “Anne Carson.”

“It reminded me of you,” she says. “Because, you know.”

“I consume other people’s sufferings while I’m always trapped in that same suffering myself.”

She sighs. “Yeah, but—labyrinths, they’re just mazes, right?”

“Well—”

She plows on, kissing you gently, then whispering, “You’re helping me solve mine.”

You shake your head and want to say something like,  _You’re too good for me, I’ve murdered so many people._

But instead she just takes your hands and kisses your palms and says, “Look, all clean, no matter how many people you’ve eaten.”

You smile and kiss her cheek and say, “Sweetheart, I think you’re the  _only_ person I really want to eat.”

She groans. “You can’t  _say_ those things to me.”

You laugh and tug her tighter to you—chest to chest, legs tangled.

There will be time to tell her about the moon landing, and when JFK was assassinated, when you watched revolution after revolution rise and fall. There will be time to tell her about Reykjavik.

But for now, you lace your fingers through her soft hair and say, “Thank you for loving me.”

You mean so many unspoken things and you think she understands because she says, “All that you are is so lovable.”

“Merry Christmas, baby.”

She smiles. “Merry Christmas.”

/

In the morning you wake to more snow and no one to eat, but there are fairy lights and gingerbread and  _Laura_ , messy and gorgeous beside you, and everything is cinnamon and woods and you make a plan to show her the Northern Lights soon, after all of this is over, because she’s saved you again and again.

You set out again and watch her breath float in front of you, crystallized, evidence of life leading the way.


End file.
